Republican Presidential candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney got into a battle over Social Security in the last debate. Neither one has a clue what the American people want. As the pollster John Luntz discovered people want a solution that doesn’t impact current participants in Social Security but creates a retirement program that is owned by the people and not subject to invasion and manipulation by the government.

Mitt Romney supports reforming the present safety net plan. Rick Perry supports state plans like the one run in Galveston. As both are run by governments, both fail the smell test – people don’t trust government with their money. Both candidates have been threatened by Democrats and people in their own party to avoid Social Security because it scares seniors. The Democrats will fiercely attack them on this point in next year’s election. Well thank our lucky stars for Perry because he brought the unsustainable program front and center for all to debate.

Well any kid in the sandbox knows a taxpayer can’t create a nest egg and sustainable monthly income without investing. Millions of people are currently accumulating a nest egg and a monthly retirement income by investing along with their employers in pension funds which in turn invest those funds in the stock market. Unfortunately too many of those funds are poorly managed and many of them are currently underfunded.

As the ever-increasing number of poor and many in the middle-class don’t have the funds to invest in the market how can a retirement plan be created? The answer is apparently too simple for politicians to grasp. By taking the 15.3% paid in Federal payroll taxes and returning the ownership of those funds back to the taxpayer in his personally-owned investment account dedicated to investing indexed-stock funds the people would rejoice in the intelligence and creativity of their representatives in creating a real retirement program for them.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

Immediately the influx of new capital of more than $100 billion a month being fed into our stock market and economy would create over 20 million new jobs in two years. Remember the people want Congress to concentrate right now on jobs rather than debt by a 2 to 1 margin. Privatizing Social Security and investing those funds right now would not only create jobs but replace the need for government to steal from future generations to stimulate the economy. The latter doesn’t work that well anyway.

Of course if we personalize Social Security John Q. Public would be investing in the future of our country. We wouldn’t need to rely on the whims of the “rich” to create jobs. The rich will be scrambling just to keep the ball rolling. They will be working 24/7 just managing the funds of John Q. Everyone will be richer.

How richer you ask? Well let’s take a gardener skimping along with a $30,000 annual income helped by his wife who works as a waitress and makes $20,000 a year. They pay $7,500 in payroll taxes and during a 40-year working life will have invested $300,000 into their investment account. That amount invested weekly for 40 years at the average rate of return of the S&P 500 since 1871 would generate a $4 million nest egg and a $33,000 a month retirement check without invading the corpus (the $4 million).

Now can we afford it? If we afforded Obama for 4 years we can afford anything. We can retire our obligations to our seniors and invest in personal accounts. The cultural shock of such a move would make all Americans move in the same direction – make the stock of the company they work for grow and thrive. Our growth rate in the first few years would approach 10% or an increase of over $1.5 trillion a year in GDP.